Fast Break: Avocado

07.26.16

There’s nothing quite like a fresh bowl of guacamole and tortilla chips on a hot summer day. Avocados are refreshing, filling, and luckily healthy for us, given our growing love for them. It takes a particular art form to know exactly when an avocado is ripe, but when you slice it open and it’s just right, well that just can’t be beat.

No one really knows exactly where avocados originated from: the debate is either southern Mexico or Peru. The mystery is due to the avocado being domesticated as early as humans figured out how to farm, very similar to corn in this aspect. The Aztecs fell in love with the fruit, naming it aoacatl. Centuries and a bloody conquest later, the name changed to aguacate in Spanish, avocado in English. In some parts of the world you’ll hear the name “alligator pear.” Sounds appetizing, no?

The world’s love affair with this delicious fruit is not unfounded. They unfairly have a bad reputation for being high fat, and while this is totally true (one avocado has about 22 grams of fat), this is good fat. Monounsaturated fat, which avocados are rolling in, have been proven to help heart-related diseases and complications. Adding an avocado to an already balanced diet can help the body absorb the proper nutrients and give added energy that is easy to digest and breakdown.